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Magazine Rack RA | Wyatt’s World

Vegetable cookery seems to be a hot topic in food magazines this month: Food & Wine has a lovely dish of the summer’s bounty splashed over its cover, while Bon Appétit heralds the “American Vegetable Revolution.” It is a natural extension for patrons browsing magazines to turn to the library’s collections, so gather your vegetable cookbooks, create a minidisplay, and get ready to talk corn, tomatoes, and onions. Here are five suggestions, ranging from classics to new publications, to get you started.

The French Market Cookbook: Vegetarian Recipes from My Parisian Kitchen by Clotilde Dusoulier (Clarkson Potter: Crown). Famous in the food world for her blog Chocolate and Zucchini, Dusoulier presents a take on vegetarian cooking—and the way the French approach vegetables—that is charming, instructive, and visually gorgeous.

Vegetable Literacy: Cooking and Gardening with Twelve Families from the Edible Plant Kingdom, with over 300 Deliciously Simple Recipes by Deborah Madison (Ten Speed). Madison is an icon in vegetarian cooking, known for her expertise, warmth, and accessibility. Here she offers recipes centered on the botanical relationship vegetables have to one another as well as to herbs, grains, and legumes.

Plenty: Vibrant Recipes from London’s Ottolenghi by Yotam Ottolenghi (Chronicle). Ottolenghi, a UK chef and columnist, is the new name to know in vegetable cookery—as well as cooking more generally. Here he focuses on vegetables and offers home cooks a range of lush, smart, and innovative dishes that never fail to surprise and delight.

Chez Panisse Vegetables by Alice Waters (HarperCollins). There is hardly a more famous chef in America devoted to seasonal, fresh, and local food than Waters. In this exhaustive compendium she focuses on vegetables and offers more than 250 recipes that make the best use of them. Enhanced with segments on cooking methods, her authoritative guide, while not as splashy as many current cookbooks, is a treat for serious cooks.

Eat Your Vegetables: Bold Recipes for the Single Cook by Joe Yonan (Ten Speed). Anyone faced with a bumper crop of zucchini might wonder at Yonan’s premise, but for fans of his food column in the Washington Post and for any cook who likes to pick out just a few things at the farmer’s market, his guide to vegetables for one will be welcomed.

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Neal Wyatt compiles LJ's online feature Wyatt's World and is the author of The Readers' Advisory Guide to Nonfiction (ALA Editions, 2007). She is a collection development and readers' advisory librarian from Virginia. Those interested in contributing to The Reader's Shelf should contact her directly at Readers_Shelf@comcast.net